NUMBER 22 SUMMER 2006/2007

EDITORIAL:
In the interests of educational equality and excellence Whitlam’s idea
of a Children’s Commission and a Schools Commission to examine needs
and recommend funding on an objective basis should be resurrected. A
recent OECD survey of early childhood education and care shows
expenditure on early childhood services offers higher social and
economic returns than equivalent spending on school and post-school
education.

Geoffrey Barker states that the anti-terrorism laws
introduced by the Howard government are a threat to democracy, while
terrorists cannot threaten the existence of any modern state except in
the unlikely event that they can acquire weapons of mass destruction.

John M. Legge says that one of the hard lessons to be
learned from the unpopularity of the UK Blair government is that
allocating government functions to the private sector will attract
private partners who only see the public sector as a set of rents
waiting to be harvested and will fail to deliver a politically
acceptable level of service.

Ian McAuley analyses the new discipline of behavioural
economics which brings other disciplines such as individual and social
psychology, game theory and even neurology to bear on what we actually
do in markets, rather than relying on the abstract notion of what
economists believe we do.

Ernest Rodeck points out that while Australia’s assets
might be growing faster than foreign debt, much of our wealth is based
on high valuation of houses and these would be of little interest to
foreign financiers in a crisis.

Clinton Fernandes discusses the history of fascism to show
that the Howard government is simply trying to contain the power of
trade unions and curtail civil liberties in order to strengthen
capitalism rather than leading a counter-revolution against the
Enlightenment.

Tony Lynch argues that the task of politics is to provide
material security so citizens can develop their full potential and to
ensure that when political power increases it is freedom-enhancing, not
freedom-restricting.

Geoffrey Chia contends that the concept of Intelligent
Design is incompatible with science based on rational enquiry and
therefore has no place alongside the theory of evolution in the science
classroom.

Geoff Russell points out that methane gas is 21 times more
potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 but, unlike CO2 which hangs around in
the atmosphere for 100 years, methane is removed from the atmosphere
within 10 years. He concludes that cuts in red meat consumption which
can cut methane emissions 40% would stabilise temperature for an
extended period and enable CO2 emission reduction technologies to be
developed.

David Risstrom concludes from studying societal responses
to human-induced climate change that industrial societies may choose to
respond by insulating its effects rather than responding to our role in
creating it.

Denis Kenny says that if we are to build and preserve the
creative universe of the 21st century we must replace various forms of
moral obligation and obedience to the established religious, political
and economic structures with a new moral responsibility capable of
ensuring a sustainable future and fostering biological, social and
cultural diversity within a democratic framework.

Roy Williams examines the technique of the Howard
government’s ministers and its supporters of dismissing critics of the
government by focusing on (or inventing) an exaggerated claim against
the government, labelling it as a ‘crazy conspiracy theory’ and then
ignoring valid criticism of the relevant issue.

Christine Awad and Liz Curran describe how the new
sole parent pension requirements help stigmatise sole parents and
increase the risk of poverty and social disadvantage by the threat to
income security

NOTE
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